A Witch's Guide to Going Incognito
by Akirys
Summary: Passomo is fed up with his life as a witch and decides to infiltrate the DWMA as a regular meister with a regular Weapon. Only problem is, he doesn't actually have a partner. The Weapon he does stumble into is powerful, but what's with her air of mystery…? Passomo is determined to reach a three-star ranking, morally or not, but he has to keep Death from discovering them first.


**A/N: Thanks very much to Sedgehammer for beta-ing my first Soul Eater fic!**

~*Q*~

Pacing outside the Death Weapon Meister Academy, Passomo wished he'd been a better witch. But it was a little late for that.

The DWMA loomed above him with all its sharp spires and polished walls. He calculated the courtyard ahead of him. Four more steps, and Death would probably be able to sense a rogue witch on campus. Unless…

Passomo, for the millionth time, checked his Soul Protect. No problems there. He knew he was one of the best Protect users in the clan. But all it would take was one slip-up, and he'd be kicked out or, more likely, executed faster than a Weapon could transform.

His feet moved almost of their own accord. Passomo cringed as he walked stiffly onto the DWMA's territory. He'd made it! He didn't stop moving, since he knew that he was likely to turn right back around otherwise.

Passomo had wanted to join the academy for over a year now. He was sick of his clan; sick of his spells; sick of the corrupted eyes of his fellow witches, who were, as a rule, greedy and petty. Sure, he could make a comfortable life thriving on shady Witch law, but he didn't _want_ to. The Academy was a place to hone his skill while hiding from the eye of both witches who viewed him as a traitor and stuffy humans who didn't like fitting magical beings in with their politics.

(He wondered if, after he graduated and/or his Weapon became a Death Scythe, he could become a mercenary. That seemed like a fun way to make money.)

Oh yeah...the Death Weapons. He still needed one of those.

Luckily, he'd planned the day of his break-in well. Today was the first day of school for the youngest class, and they'd be milling around with their name tags, encouraged to mingle and find someone who matched their soul wavelength. Passomo reached up to finger the sloppily-made paper tag he'd pinned on his shirt (it read MEISTER). That's right, he'd forged a name tag, too. He was SO good at this.

Despite his instincts screaming at him to run, he stepped forward, faking confidence, and started strolling. There were a bunch of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds already stumbling around on the grounds. It ground Passomo's gears that he'd have to join a bunch of kids when he was already a cool 15 years old, but he was quite sure that he couldn't risk sneaking in with a class like, say, Crescent Moon.

Passomo was a little worried he looked _off_. He'd replicated a school uniform as best he could from scraps of fabric; the school allowed such a wide variety of tops and bottoms that it almost didn't matter, but he refused to take the risk. Right now he wore a gray jacket over a reddish-orange shirt with brown hems. (They were supposed to be straight lines, but he'd messed up with cutting the fabric and they just looked like poorly-sewn jagged zigzags.) His pants were baggy and an ugly beige color. At least they were comfortable, and he'd done well enough that he could decently pass as a student.

"Hey," Passomo greeted the nearest Weapon he saw, a stocky boy, a little on the older side, with ginger hair. The boy shot him a friendly glance, but his face quickly turned to confusion.

"Hey...what's up with your soul? I'm not reading many wavelengths."

 _Oh crap! Oh no no no!_ "Uh, it's just the way my soul works, I guess. I'm not very expressive…" He shuffled his feet, trying to keep his face neutral.

"I don't think we'd get along very well, then." The boy smiled and nodded politely and turned away.

Passomo moved on at a quicker pace. His heart was pounding. What kind of idiot would try and soul-mingle with a barrier around his soul?! If one of these kids knew the nature of Soul Protect…

He faced an exit and started speedwalking toward it. Clearly, he was ill-prepared. He had to find another spell, heck, make one up even, that let his soul wavelength mimic a normal human's without giving away his nature. Then how would he sneak into a class with no Weapon? That didn't matter now, he'd wait another year if he had to, another year of living on the streets blowing up dumpsters. He wasn't ready to-

 _Clang_.

Passomo promptly tripped and fell over something flat and hard lying in the grass. He scrambled to his feet, checking to see if anyone had caught his blunder. No one even turned around.

The object, to his surprise, was a shield. Passomo crouched to examine it. It was about four feet tall and two feet wide. It was ovular - oblong - and smooth, and its surface was made of some white, polished material that shimmered vaguely in the sun. Dark gold curlicues trimmed the edges, and in the center was an eight-pointed star.

Passomo thought immediately that it had to be a Weapon. No piece of lost rubble would be this fancy.

"Hey, are you okay?" he said softly, feeling silly for even talking to it. "What's, uh, what's up?"

No response from the shield.

"Are you dead? Are you asleep? Can Weapons even sleep in that form?"

The shield remained silent. Seized, suddenly, by a wild idea, Passomo picked it up and slung it over his shoulder. The weapon was clearly meant to be carried, since it had two handles on the back, on the top and bottom, as well as a flexible strap. It was surprisingly light, and he thought he saw a distortion in its surface when he pressed a hand to the golden star, as if he'd poked a computer screen.

Then he ran. His new shield thumped against his back as he raced west, where his current living space was located. His surroundings slowly lost their shine and grandeur until he was surrounded by old apartments and slummy alleyways: the living space of a witch.

Passomo thudded to a stop next to an overfilled trash bin. His legs were burning. He was _not_ an athlete.

He slipped off his new shield, then tossed it on the ground in a brief fit of anger and exhaustion. He had been looking forward to this day for _months_. He'd made plan after plan, discarded one idea after another, practiced his Soul Protect for days on end until the effort of keeping it up for sixteen days straight was like lifting feathers. He'd disregarded nearly all of his other spells in favor of Soul Protect; when was the last time he'd practiced False Death or Twitch? Occam's Razor had finally pointed him to his current plan, which was simply to slip in on an easy day and blend in with the other students, and he'd still managed to screw it up. All he had to show for his venture was a shield that didn't even shapeshift.

And now he was hungry.

Muttering to himself, Passomo dug through his small pouch (he refused to call it a 'fanny pack') of belongings. He had some change, paper and pens, hairbands with his own longish brown hair still sticking to them, and even found a tampon squashed in the bottom, but his only bit of food was a granola bar from a dollar store about five miles off.

He looked at the trash bin. Well…

Part of the reason he'd been able to survive on his own was because he had an incredible constitution; maybe that was also why his spell endurance was so good. To complement it, he had a spell called Manna. It let him wipe any foodstuff free of questionable germs or bacteria and transform it into a soft, tasteless ball with the consistency of white bread (or of 'old sponge' if he wasn't feeling charitable). He used it when he wasn't able to get to a shelter or a witch's sanctuary, and, well, it hadn't killed him yet.

With all the enthusiasm of someone who's gone dumpster diving about seventy times too many, Passomo kicked the garbage can over, and a flood of disgusting trash washed over the alley. He looked over it, careful to pick out only the food items with his eyes. If he saw _another_ old diaper, he wouldn't be able to eat for two days.

Thankfully, someone must have come by recently, because there were a couple of cleanish brown apple cores sitting on the edge of the pile. Passomo used a stick to gather them into a pile. Now it was time to - oh, right, Soul Protect. He couldn't cast magic without dispelling it.

 _"Poss poss poss, Soul Protect-oka,"_ he chanted softly.

The spell dispersed, and he winced as the pent-up soul wavelengths sizzled outwards in a radius of purple energy. No, if this spell ever slipped when he was any closer to DWMA, he would be in major trouble. Best to observe from a distance...as usual.

He turned reluctantly back to his pile of garbage and crouched over it. _"Poss poss poss, Manna-poss!"_

The food seemed to dissolve into purple energy, and it flew into his hands, where it reformed into fluffy white tennis-ball sized clumps of Manna. He grimaced into it as he raised one of them to his mouth to take a bite.

Something out of the corner of his eye made him freeze.

A movement - no, a glow. And a girl's voice: "I feel like I should stop you there."

He turned to see a Weapon standing in place of the shield.

~*Q*~

 **A/N: Please leave a review if you want to see more! I don't have the second chapter completed yet, and it's been a while since I decided to upload an incomplete story on a whim. Giving me feedback helps keep me motivated to see the story through to the end :)**

 **~*Akirys*~**


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